The theme at this year's Chartered Management Institute's (CMI) recent conference was how to rectify the UK's chronic shortage of qualified managers and enable the country, in both the private and public sectors, to become "fit for growth".

Rectifying the problem through management and leadership development is essential to getting Britain back on its feet but at present, just one in five managers holds a management qualification. This is every bit as much of an issue for the public sector, with all the changes and pressures it is experiencing, as it is for private sector businesses.

We all know that improving management and leadership in the public sector is no easy task, and it would be impossible to apply a one-size-fits-all approach to the problem. This was something raised by the conference's expert skills panel, which was made up of Michael Davis, chief executive of UK Commission for Employment and Skills; David MacLeod, chair of the government's Employee Engagement Task Force and Geoff Russell, chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency. All offered and debated a number of differing ways to tackle skills shortages to ensure a pipeline of incoming talent, from young people entering the workforce and immediate line managers, right the way up to the leaders running our country.

Getting priorities right when it comes to skills, starting in our classrooms, provoked a lively discussion. Our education system has received a number of seismic shocks over the past 18 months and Russell was keen to point out that part of this change was due to the government's move away from single-handed responsibility for upskilling the nation. The onus now needs to be on the public and private sectors to work with government policy to develop the skills capability of future staff.

One question from the floor raised the issue of NHS staff promoted to management positions because of valuable clinical skills but who may lack key management skills such as how to manage budgets or motivate a team.

The UK is full of these "accidental managers" who are crying out for support; management skills are not innate, they must be learnt, developed and nurtured. In the NHS, there is no professional leadership and management framework in place as yet to provide uniform management skills for clinical and non-clinical managers.

Introducing such a system would be hugely beneficial to the NHS. It would ensure all NHS managers were trained to a standard level of excellence, including those who are promoted to management positions due to their top class performance on the clinical side.

Looking at how to ensure management and leadership development becomes a national priority, Russell observed that support for management training needs to come from the top and filter down. It's interesting to see this message being repeated in this week's public administration select committee report, which called on the government to place greater emphasis on management and leadership development for those at ministerial level – a great example of how top-down support within the public sector could be increased.

As with any change, it can be hard to get the leadership team on board to enable implementation of leadership training for those further down the line. Russell astutely observed that if you're running a government department, excellence in organisation and leadership development is simply not at the top of your agenda, especially in the current climate.

However, this was beginning to change now that coalition policies have been drafted and made public; the onus is switching to effective execution. And this is where management and leadership comes into its own.

I hope that the message that good management is essential for success will move from being debated to being adopted. It was hugely encouraging to see so many experts, including John Hayes MP and Sir Roger Carr, echo this viewpoint. However, what we need to see is action and we wait expectantly to see if the commitment to strong leadership made by so many at the conference will translate into effective execution over the coming months.

There's no getting away from the fact that bad management is harming the UK at the moment and is becoming a crucial issue in terms of public sector performance. Management and leadership training and skills make your teams more productive, more engaged and ultimately more successful and help create public sector teams who deliver high quality services today and in the future.